Highlights

Chocolate Grinder Mix 74Death’xit: Manifest Your Self

The death’xit of individual/personal creativity began when the Age of Information was defined by the Internet. Eventually, individual emotions and imagination will be smashed by how the Internet has defined them for everyone to understand. This is the death’xit of YOU. Remember during childhood when someone axed about something you totally didn’t know and you lied so grandiose that the truth didn’t matter? I challenge anyone reading this to do something “out-of-the-[Age of Information]” this FriFri. Create something and keep it rolling. Make then believe. Manifest your self.

“Journey Into Infinity”

From a journal found in a sealed cabinet in the subbasement of a Dutch meat casing factory, dated 1637:

The traveler came over the ridge at the moment the wind picked up. Indeed, it seemed like he had acute control of the elements — and, despite the cold, wore only a thin overcoat, its sleeves shortened, adorned with images of vibrant fauna. By the time he entered the courtyard, I knew this man was clearly a wizard, and a high ranking one at that. I dared not address him as he swung a giant sack down from his back and began setting up his magical implements of untold power: a series of thick boards flecked with colored dots above keys smoother and brighter than those on the harpsichord I had seen played at court on a few occasions. These were instruments, I realized. Without a word, the wizard activated them.

His hands traced a pattern and a series of tones hit the air, rounded and light, repeating, building in intensity, repeating, repeating. I covered my ears, for the sound was too much, but the traveler’s melody burst out above the repeating tones, thick, inhuman, like a future beast made of wood or stone or something sleeker howling along with the wind. I closed my eyes and let the wizard overwhelm me. I don’t know how much time had passed by the time the notes died. I had retreated fully into myself. When I looked up, the wizard was gone.

Lucky for us, JD Emmanuel is back in our century, purveying a new batch of electronic meditations as deep and time-swallowing as his classic output from the mid-80s. Time Traveler, his first full-length album of original material in over a decade, is available now on 2xLP from Belgium’s Aguirre Records.

Redneks

Like a wobbling wheel barely attached to a van, either rusted or rugged, barreling down the freeway: dem Redneks is all about popping off. From racing to parking in the matter of matters escalating; how long do it take for a shaking bolt or two to deteriorate completely? Or just unhinge. And everybody watching and sweating. Feeling the moment they become rubber necked after a hurling tire smashes into their glass shattering everywhere and in their coffee and shit goes gorilla. There ain’t no stopping yourself unless it’s someone else stopping you. Music flaring through the heat wave only that one DJ/PURLE/IMAGE can collectively hear and mash. The soundtrack to your anticipation for what’s next. Oh! There’s a swerve. The sounds warp with blood in your ears and head. But it’s changed. Always change. Constantly. Rattling off. Escape through the art. Become society in all its overwhelmingnesslymented. Encompass what you will and flash them hazards. In the mean time, keep freshing Redneks by DJ/PURLE/IMAGE until a new CD or split. It’s all coming soon!

“Dank Feelings”

The chances of my NOT posting something by an artist with the name “Bonglestar Galactabong” are pretty small. So it’s lucky I guess that this “Dank Feelings” jam is smooth enough to warrant this post. Also a tweet, a share, whatever anybody has to do to let the world know that they’re hip to these warm waves and how they’ll wash your soul inside and out. Feel those frequencies filtering through your synapses, the twinkling synth in the background and that pitch-shifted voice telling all the bad things to go the hell away. More interstellar drifts to be found on Bonglestar’s SoundCloud page, and this cut can be downloaded with a lot of other future-hop tracks, recently compiled by Cincinnatti’s Boy Fruit for Terrordome Vol. 3.

Live at the Ecstatic Music Festival

Guys, combining classical music, electronic experimentation, and pop is dangerous business. If you don’t do it tastefully, you can quickly wind up with a hammy goof of a piece like this. However, if you follow these easy steps, you too can make a texturally rich composition that blurs genre lines:

STEP 2: Clearly understand how your live electronics can seamlessly and gorgeously blend with your ensemble of choice.

STEP 3: Exhibit some knowledge that the Lovely Music Ltd. gang really knew what was up with regards to this whole cross-pollination thing. Robert Ashley, in particular, is a great model for text setting.

STEP 4: Allow for improvisation/different levels of compositional control within the ensemble. This will result in a product that bears some musical similarities to your collective past but ultimately becomes something else entirely.

STEP 5: Avoid relying on those polyrhythmic Philip Glass-ian arpeggios. I get it. They sound cool. They’re all tonal chords and work great in a pop song. There’s nothing terribly wrong with this, but there are all different types of minimalism out there. Maybe try some of the Wandelweisser variety. Space and drones are a good thing.

If at any point you need a concrete example of what to do, please refer to Julia Holter, Laurel Halo, and Daniel Wohl’s recent live collaboration with new music quintet Transit, which is streaming in its entirety via WQXR below. It’s a truly forward-looking example of the intersections of experimental music, pop, and classical composition that excellently illustrates how to put the above principles into action.

“The Long Shadow”

Mssrs. Caminiti and Porras, San Francisco’s finest Creatures of the Mist, purveyors of drones of the desert-scorched and mind-altering variety, return to your turntable on April 16 when Thrill Jockey releases V, the duo’s fifth full-length album (omitting their earliest CD-Rs from discographical roman-numeration). At first, I planned on using some snappy phrase like “Barn Owl unsheathe their guitars” or “dust off their synths” or “fire up their Line6 DL-4s,” but if these two humans’ recent string of fully realized soloworks and collaborations is any indicator, their gear has remained unsheathed, dust-free, and fired up for quite some time now. I imagine they’re working on their next releases, solo and together and with other loved ones, right now as I write this. Perhaps they’re standing a few feet away from each other on a bluff, their boots sunk into the mud, gazing out over the bay as the sun inches slowly upward into a plume of graying cumulonimbus. (This counts as “working on their next releases” on some level.)

“The Long Shadow,” our first taste of V, hits all the Barn Owl sweet spots: clean-toned guitars chime, reverberate, and loop back to do it again; a cloud of delay-bleached organ hangs over the mix, coming back to Earth to slip a four-chord progression into the murk; pedals click on and the guitar tone splinters into that overdriven howl we know and love. Something’s new here, though: the mix is denser than previous Owl offerings. As more synth layers accumulate and absorb the duo’s previously looped tones into one mammoth, pulsing swirl, these 5 minutes stretch into what feels like 15.

Pre-orderV today from Thrill Jockey. Dust off your favorite armchair and settle in for the wait: when 40-some suns have set, the LP will be at your door.